Optimism for coming years

As I said earlier, I'm done caring about individual 18 year olds' choices of schools, and especially those who have already decided one year of college is plenty.

I also believe Self and KU are not a target school for the most elite OADs. Duke and KY get first choice, UNC next, and then we are left to compete with Oregon, Arizona, and the random Miss St, Miami, UNLVs of the world. And this year we are losing to those schools. The ones we get have baggage. I also believe Self's strength is as a system coach, with players learning his system over a course of years. OADs by and large have not adapted well under his system, nor has Self adapted well to OADs.

But, I see a huge silver lining here. I believe the OAD world will change drastically in the next two years. The NBA will open their doors again, and the top HS players will go straight to the NBA. I don't care if they make good or bad decisions to skip college, just that they don't screw up the college system anymore. The schools who TODAY focus on system players and not OADs will have full cupboards of experienced players in three years. Duke and KY will have bare cupboards, as they do every year now when they lose entire starting teams to the draft, and will have to stock up again with players they don't traditionally recruit. They'll do fine of course, but their dominance in getting the most elite players will be diminished. And, I believe Coach K will just retire when the OAD era ends. KU will be back in the "system" business, if for no other reason than we've missed on the elites this year, and by necessity will be signing multi-year prospects (though one or two may surprise and blossom into a OAD, which would be great).

Self will be in his comfort zone. We'll get excellent players who will commit mentally to more than one year, and we'll see the old KU strength, consistency and success again. And for me, I'll have players to invest in again, who will become my favorites instead of me forgetting their names and never caring about them again.

Onward ! Rock Chalk!

...and whoda thunk that Dok would play 4 years. Granted, 2 of those years were hampered by injuries, but I like the idea of him being a 4 year guy.

In the early years of the OAD era under the squid there was a question whether or not he could even keep his OAD's academically eligible after one year.

Slayer, I recall the NCAA implemented some program several years ago that was intended to penalize the OAD schools, based on graduation percentages, or some basis of completing more than one semester of school. I think there was an article that said the system might allow one or two early exit players, but if overall your roster stayed in school and made progress toward a degree, you were OK.

If that program exists, it certainly isn't enforced, or Duke and KY have found loopholes.

Regardless of what the NCAA may profess about “student athletes”.....for division 1 men’s basketball.....academic progress doesn’t put paying butts into the seats.

I choose to paint with a much less broad brush. There are only something like 60 draft spots each year and about half actually make a team. Meanwhile there are 300+ guys playing on the teams in the top 25. There are about 325 teams that AREN'T in the top 25, and all of them have a dozen or so guys on the roster.

In that regard, there are a small handful of D-1 players who are essentially pro athletes attending college. Most are guys who played HS ball well enough to get a school to pay for their college education. Take a kid like Mitch: he's living the dream. Playing at his favorite school. He probably knows that he's not an NBA level guy, and may or may not have the desire to go play a couple years overseas. He's going to be a 4 year guy who gets a degree and gets an actual JOB very shortly after his college career is over.

I'm hopeful that the Zion Williamsons of the world will be skipping college and hope very much that a lot of other OAD types wind up in the G-League rather than school. With the new rules, I'd also LOVE to see the NCAA make it a rule that a kid who commits has to stay 2 years, and if he doesn't, the school will lose a scholarship. This would put some pressure on the decision of who to recruit and put some pressure on the recruit to stick around.